Wood stoves seem to have a learning curve but it shouldn't be that steep.

Think I'm going to add more air intake holes to the stove and see how it does.

Yes indeed, wood stoves need lots of air.

Add more holes to yours for sure to get it to work.

cynar, I need to read the interview again and see the size of his stoves before he was asked by backpackinglight to make the bushbuddy. I think BPL was influenced by the discussions on TLUD's and wanted in on the member's interests. Stove makers will make what ever you want.

The next development in the Bushbuddy saga came when Ryan Jordan at BackpackingLight purchased one of the new Bushbuddy stoves. He was impressed enough with the secondary combustion to ask me if I could make him a 6 ounce version of the stove. How could I reduce the weight? The obvious place to save a lot of weight, and a lot of work too, and potential problems of fit, would be to eliminate the base that the firebox sat on. By rearranging the internal construction of the stove to allow eliminating the base section, and by using even thinner metal for most of the stove, I was able to achieve this goal. Soon afterward, just before his upcoming Arctic 1000 trip in 2006, he asked me if I could make an even smaller stove that would fit inside his Snow Peak .9L titanium pot. I built for Ryan what turned out to be the prototype for the Bushbuddy Ultra.As they say, "the rest is history". Ryan ordered a hundred Bushbuddy Ultra stoves from me, and popularized the stove. I discontinued the larger model Bushbuddy, and started making a new "redesigned regular model" that was the same size as the Ultra.